Thoughtworks retreat: AI is breaking software development in predictable ways

Martin Fowler published takeaways from Thoughtworks' Future of Software Development Retreat, finding that "practices, tools and organizational structures built for human-only software development are breaking in predictable ways under AI-assisted work." Key themes include a new "supervisory engineering middle loop," risk tiering as a core discipline, TDD as the strongest form of prompt engineering, and the need to reframe developer experience for agents. The retreat concluded these replacements "are forming, but not yet mature."

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